Read full description of the books:

One hundred and ninety years after Lewis and Clark failed to discover the Northwest Passage, W. Hodding Carter and Preston Maybank set out upstream at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, destined to repeat history. Westward Whoa is the rollicking account of this modern-day remounting of the great expedition across the territory of the Louisiana Purchase and on to the Pacific Ocean. Armed with just the bare essentials (freeze-dried dinners, a small library of outdoor-survival manuals, one credit card), they traveled by raft, on foot and on horseback in the manner of their legendary precursors. Okay, they did have a small outboard motor and resorted to renting a car in a moment of desperation, but apart from those transgressions, the trip was strictly roughing it by the book. Of course, Carter and Maybank faced hazards of another, more contemporary order: a sea of Styrofoam cups, the Army Corps of Engineers, pathological liars, alcoholic mountainmen, and lonely teenage girls...all sought to impede their progress. Wilderness may be in retreat, but it's still wild out there. Could Meriwether Lewis and William Clark have handled an entire state populated with men in camouflage clothing? Or the tornado of the century? Or even a river that runs out of water? Carter and Maybank faced all of these adversities, plus a zillion wildly aggressive mosquitoes. And despite numerous failures of nerve and equipment, they reached Astoria, Oregon, alive. Westward Whoa is by turns hilarious and contemplative, ever respectful of the men who made this journey the first time around. It is a vivid story of venturing into the expanse of the West, the harrowing journey of hapless explorers that will surely awaken the slumbering spirit of adventure in all who read it.

Read information about the author

A native of Greenville, Mississippi, W. Hodding Carter attended Kenyon College and spent two years in Kenya with the Peace Corps. He has written for several national magazines, including Esquire, Smithsonian, Newsweek, and Outside. He lives with his family in Rockport, Maine.